Menu

Tag Archives: broccoli

Does anyone else remember this dish from childhood? This cheesy casserole of broccoli, chicken, and rice was one of my favorite meals while growing up. I remember digging into a plateful of creamy, cheesy broccoli rice at the end of many a late soccer practice. When the weather started to get cooler and the days got shorter, I would spend the waning hours of daylight doing trapping drills, taking shots, and scrimmaging with my teammates. Sometimes it got so dark that our parents headed to the cars to run the heat and illuminate the field with their headlights. When I finally got home, cold, muddy and famished, a cheesy casserole was the ultimate comfort food.

Quorn Naked Chik’n Cutlets make it easy to recreate this dish without meat*. If you’re not into meat substitutes but you want to replace the protein lost from removing the chicken, add a can of chickpeas or a block of silken tofu to the mixture before pouring into the casserole dish and baking.

My intention is that this hearty casserole will be a welcome treat for Kyle when he gets home from a late bicycle ride or a long day of work. Because it’s a one dish meal, I can make it ahead of time and then pop it in the oven to reheat, and cleanup is very easy. I hope that this crowd-pleasing dish finds a place on your table as the weather gets cooler and the annual nesting and hibernating begin!

Vegetarian Chicken, Broccoli and Rice Casserole

Serves 8

Ingredients:

2 cups short grain brown rice

4 cups low sodium vegetable broth

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1/2 yellow onion, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

4 cups frozen broccoli, chopped

4 ounces artichokes (frozen or marinated), chopped

1 – 9.7 ounce package of Quorn Naked Chik’n Cutlets, thawed and diced

2 cups lowfat milk

2 Tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour

1/3 cup plain Greek yogurt (or sour cream)

2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

1 teaspoon dried tarragon

Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

Heat vegetable broth over medium heat. Add brown rice and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 40-50 minutes or until all liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat and fluff with a fork.

While rice is cooking, heat olive oil in a large pan over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, broccoli and artichokes. Saute until tender. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add naked chik’n cutlets, diced, and continue to cook over low-medium heat for 5 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a medium pot over medium heat, combine milk and flour with a whisk until fully incorporated. Cook for 8 minutes then remove from heat.

To the milk sauce, add yogurt or sour cream, 1 cup of shredded cheese, tarragon, and salt and pepper to taste.

Add the brown rice and cheese sauce to the large pot with the vegetables and vegetarian chicken. Transfer to a large casserole dish and top with 1 cup of shredded cheese. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter got a sneak preview this weekend of the latest weird vegetable to cross the threshold of my kitchen. Kyle couldn’t resist picking up this amazing broccoli Romanesco from Walnut Hill Farm Produce at the farmers’ market on Saturday. This fascinating vegetable features a Fibonacci number of spiraled cones on each floret, and its texture approximates a natural fractal. It looks like cauliflower, is technically considered broccoli, and tastes somewhere in between the two. In a good way, promise.

Since this variety originated in Italy, I knew I wanted to do a pasta dish. When I did a little research online and tasted the vegetable raw, I discovered that it did not need a lot of seasoning in order to shine, so I opted for a very simple dinner.

How crazy does this thing look?! I broke down this huge head of broccoli into florets, then steamed it for 5-7 minutes. Meanwhile, I cooked some farfalle (bow tie pasta) in boiling water for 10 minutes, then drained it and reserved the cooking water in a separate bowl.

When the broccoli was steamed, I added a couple of thinly sliced cloves of garlic and olive oil. After cooking over medium heat for a few minutes, I added a big bowl of freshly grated Parmesan cheese to the pot, along with the juice of one lemon, freshly ground black pepper, a few dashes of Italian herb and spice blend, and a cup of reserved pasta water. After a few minutes, I added the farfalle to the pot, gave it a thorough stir, then added a few teaspoons of capers and salt and pepper to taste. If you don’t want to ruin a good thing, then I recommend that you do nothing else at all to this dish. Except for maybe a sprinkle of crushed red pepper.

Just enjoy heaping bowls of the steaming hot pasta and you’re all set. Bonus points for a roaring fire, a warm fuzzy blanket, or an oversize glass of wine.

In this week’s South of the James Chef’s Demonstration, we saw a lot of dark greens for Fall. Much of the summer produce is still hanging around, but it is waning, and winter squashes and greens are starting to take its place. It was another semi-rainy market. It seems like we always have a lot of mushrooms during the cooler, damper cooking demos, which is fitting I suppose.

Haas Mushrooms’ roasted mushroom vinaigrette livened up a savory kale and arugula salad. I love a short ingredient list, and this bottled dressing has a shorter, more pronounceable list of ingredients than most of the dressings on grocery store shelves.

Speaking of sauces, Chef Sam made an extremely flavorful chimichurri sauce to serve on top of herbed pan seared mahi-mahi from Barham seafood. He served the fish alongside a salad of kale, arugula, tomatoes, onion and Goats R Us feta. The second round of salads incorporated Night Sky Farm’s 6 months aged Flora Danica goat cheese. The greens themselves are often overlooked in a salad, but I have to mention that the fresh arugula from Crumptown Farm was very tender, peppery and delicious. I took a break from the demo table to buy some arugula to bring home, just based on the fantastic smell of it, before I even tried any.

The final dish was a goat cheese and vegetable hors d’oeuvres that incorporated both the florets and the stalks of a head of broccoli. Chef Sam pan toasted some sliced French bread from Tater Dave’s. Pan toasted bread always looks so good at these cooking demonstrations. I think I should stop putting it in the oven and start doing it this way instead.

After toasting the sliced bread, the Chef grated some broccoli stalks to make a slaw. He told us that he made his first broccoli slaw in the early nineties, when an ingredient order mistake caused his restaurant to have dozens of cases of broccoli (I may be exaggerating now) that overran his kitchen. As time ticked by, Sam had to use up the broccoli as quickly as possible while it was still fresh, so as not to waste anything. And his first broccoli slaw was born. The one he made on Saturday included shredded broccoli, basil, parsley, olive oil, vinegar, black sesame seeds and salt.

The Chef steamed some broccoli, sliced tomatoes, and constructed an appetizer of vegetables with goat cheese, olive oil, and spices atop toasted bread. He used a spice blend from the Village Garden that was really tasty and spicier than I expected. I never would have thought to put broccoli on bread, but these flavors worked well together and the fresh bite was satisfying and delicious.

We are off next week, but will return to the South of the James Farmers’ Market on October 13th. That’s just one week before my wedding – do you think I could convince Chef Sam to do special occasion food to celebrate? Romantic food? Dishes for entertaining? Who knows!